Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's that time of year whenever your house is filled with the aroma of cinnamon rolls and pumpkin pie and fudge. And if you're living a low carb lifestyle, that can feel like a landmine of temptation as we go through the holidays.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Today we're going to discuss five simple food hacks that will let you enjoy the holidays and leave the dinner table feeling satisfied, not guilty.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Welcome to the Duster Mudd podcast. We like to talk about food freedom and farming and today it is food food. Seven years ago, yeah, we ditched the standard American diet and with that we have been through seven. Is this our seventh?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: This is our seventh holiday season.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: We have been through six holiday seasons without eating the rolls.
Right. And we, we, we gave it all up, but we didn't give up good food and we did not give up the holiday spread either.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah. After 25 years in the Air Force, we bought this farm where we focus food regeneratively and our focus really is proteins. So for seven years now, we've been low carb and this is all feeding into that lifestyle. It supports this lifestyle. So we wanted to chat with you guys about some of the hacks that we've found to get us through the holiday season. So hack number one.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Hack number one, bring your own dish. Bring your own dish because that is going to give you something, you know, that you can eat and maybe even somebody else.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And for me, don't make it the protein because most of the time you can find a turkey, a ham, a steak, a roast beef, like whatever it is, that's going to be low carb anyway. Bring that thing that is going to be the complement to the protein. Make it a, your favorite cheesy green bean casserole, some kind of cheesy cauliflower mash, a sugar free sweet potato casserole, like something along those lines that is going to complement the protein.
If you bring the protein, then that's really the only thing that you know that's going to be low carb.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: You're just sitting there eating dry turkey.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Well, don't make your turkey dry.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Well, don't do.
Put it in a brine.
Don't make it dry. Yeah, for sure. Hack number two brings us to the turkey, right?
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Focus on protein first. When we go through the line, if you're at a, if you're at an event where it's a big family gathering, you got to get your plate and go through down the buffet. Right.
Make sure that your plate is mentally, you may not get to the turkey first.
But mentally, keep enough space that the turkey is the primary portion of your plate or the, or the ham or whatever the protein happens to be. And even consider eating that first so that you are putting some fats and putting some protein into your stomach that will help offset the blood sugar with the carbohydrates.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah. It'll help you deal with Aunt Mary. And Aunt Mary's going to say, now, Rich, you need to get some more food on that plate.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: And Aunt Mary will be totally satisfied if she looks at your plate and it's full of the proteins.
And the fact that you skipped out on the roll can quickly be dismissed with. I just wanted to save room for the roast beef. Right, Right. So if you fill that plate up with the proteins, not only do you know that it's going to be low carb, you're not going to be spiking your blood sugar with all of the starches and breads and everything, but it's not going to make you stand out having bird portions on your plate. And everybody's going to be wondering why you're not eating with everybody else.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And the people who have taken the, the time and energy and, and money, we all know that's tight right now everywhere and, and put so much and love into building this meal and creating this food so that you can gather together and have some quality family time and be thankful for what we have, whether it's Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever you happen to.
You want to respect their, their time and their energy and money and load your plate up. Right.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Hack number three, near and dear to my heart is swap the sweets, but don't ditch them.
Sweets are a part of it that we all love. Right.
And it's, it's a treat. It's like a feast. And it tops off the feast.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Yeah. If you don't have to have them, fine. But for most of us, we like to have the sweets, especially in, in the holiday season, at the time of the holidays. So swapping them. This could be one where this is something you could bring so that you know that the sweets are going to be low carb. Like, Shell just did a video on a low carb mini, like cheesecake cupcakes. Awesome. Those things taste so good. They were really easy. They pop right out of these silicone muffin pans. I mean, like, the whole thing was, I don't know, what did it take you less than.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Oh, well, I mean, they have to chill. But the, the prep part was like, I don't know, 25 minutes yeah.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: To throw it together, like less than half an hour. The whole thing was thrown together. It only baked for like 20 minutes. It's not like a cheesecake where you have to have a, a water bath and a springform pan and all of the things.
Yeah. Very simple, but yet of it with a low carb dessert that looks amazing and you know that it's okay to eat.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: So this could be that thing. Like bring your own. This could be it. Right.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: This is the portion that you were saying. Guilt. Not feeling guilty. Because most of us don't feel guilty that we loaded our plate up with roast beef.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: No. Right.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Or even the corn or even the salad or whatever other things that you put on your plate during that main portion. It's the desserts. When we go back, us Americans, when we go back and load up, you know, normally at home you'll eat like one piece of cake, but at Thanksgiving you got get, you get a, a dessert plate. Well, yeah, all the different things. Well, that's where we start feeling guilty.
That's the guilt part. And if we can reduce that, man, that's, that's like a huge win in this low carb lifestyle.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Really?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Hack four.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Hack four.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Eat real food. Not Franken food.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Franken food.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: So Shell tells the kids all the time, if it is what it always was, eat it. Right. So pick the foods that are what they always were. Pick the meat, pick the green beans. You know, like. Yes.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: What. Even if you really just want to have a little treat. Right. And say, I'm, I, I haven't eaten a mashed potato in a long time, you know, I, I discourage it. I'm probably not going to do that. But if, if a person did some mashed potato, real mashed potatoes with some butter and some cream and not a lot of it is not going to be the end of the world because it's still food. It didn't. It, it's not. Didn't come out of a box.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah, right, right.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: If it had the peels in it, that'd be even better.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah. The fiber would slow everything down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: But at any rate, the, the Franken food, eating, the, eating the real food is, well, that's just the motto for life. If it is what it always was, go ahead and eat it, you know?
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, not, not just from a, a carbohydrate perspective, but just from a nutrition perspective.
You're going to get more nutrients out of the real food other than the whatever fortified.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: It says keto on the front of the box, and you turn the box around, and it has 27 different ingredients that you cannot pronounce. Nor could you make that in your kitchen. Don't. Don't eat that.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Don't. Just stay away from it and go back to the things that are the real food.
Simple.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Yep. All right, Hack number five.
Have some grace and reset. Because we're human, right? We're not robots. We're humans, and we enjoy food.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: And we enjoy the company of our families and friends.
And sometimes that means.
My best friend made that pie because she knew that I like it or used to like it, and now I don't eat that anymore.
But at the end of the day, she's my best friend, and I might just eat some of it. Right?
To.
Out of love. Right? And so I can eat that and I can walk away from that meal and go, it's okay, it's okay.
I can just reset. It's not the end of the world.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: It's. I. I hate the. The.
The visual of falling off the wagon. Right? The visual is there's this wagon and it's driving down the road, and for this conversation, it's called low carb lifestyle. Right? And after one meal, I fall off that wagon, and the visual is I'm left standing on the side of the road and the wagon has left me.
Yeah. Right. And it's like, oh, well, I guess I'm not doing that anymore.
Right? Like, that's the. That's the mentality. That's the vision that you get with that kind of concept. And it's like, no, you're not falling off the wagon. You ate some carbs. Now next meal. Don't.
Right? Like, yeah, it's just not. It's just not a big deal. It's not like this, oh, my gosh, I'm. I'm such a failure. The wagon has left me, and I'm.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Now I'm here by myself.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: I'm back here in the swamp of the standard American diet. You know, it's like, no, just.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: That's a really good way to put it.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Next meal.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Don't, you know, like, have some days with yourself.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah, Today is not tomorrow.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah, have grace reset. You know what to do?
Start doing it again with the next meal. And, you know, when it. Christmas rolls around and it happens again.
Okay. Have some grace, reset.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Okay, let's talk about. Let's just go over really quickly, like, what does our. If we're making it at home ourselves, what. Actually, we're Going to my parents house and my mom and I are going to put together. They eat keto. Low carb. We're going to put together a Thanksgiving meal.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Ooh.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: That is not high in carbohydrates.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Bonus content.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Here we go.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Here we go.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: So we will have turkey that we grew because we're taking it with us.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Pastured turkey, which I'm super excited.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Pasture raised fed GMO free food outside its whole life.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: I think we'll probably do a sweet potato casserole, but we're going to use cauliflower and we will make it be like sweet potatoes. So it will. We'll use pumpkin instead of the actual sweet potato. We'll use pumpkins and cauliflower and all of the allulose. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of allulose in this meal because that's the sweetener that we'll use for sweetening all of the sweeter casseroles.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Why would you use pumpkin instead of sweet potato?
[00:12:13] Speaker A: It's just a little bit lower carb, but it still has a bunch of flavor.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Same flavor profile. Not exactly the same flavor, but the same flavor profile.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: If you wanted to do more carb, if you wanted to do a, just like have a half of a sweet potato with some butter. Totally cool. But this is a casserole that we're going to bake, so we'll. I'm, sure we'll, we'll go that route. There's plenty of recipes out there.
Yeah.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: And the, the allulose is no sugar. The pecans are very low carb. You can even do the little crust on top with butter, which is no carbs. Right. Like you can make as a, a fake. Ish sweet potato.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: We don't do the marshmallo kind, so that's not even a problem. We don't. That's not the kind that we like.
Another one thing that we'll do, I'm sure we may do some sort of dressing or like a Stove Top. Everyone likes some sort of turkey dressing.
There may be a lot of cauliflower you're going to hear here. But you can make cauliflower. It's kind of like tofu. You can sort of make it taste like whatever you want it to taste like. So we may use that as a.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: A low carb alternative or cauliflower based stuffing. Okay.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe.
Or she may make it and have a, just have small amounts of it. I'm not sure yet.
Probably we're going to lean more towards the Zero carb type.
The.
I think before we've done pumpkin pie, you can totally do a pumpkin pie. You can do it crustless or you could do an almond crust and do pumpkin. And again, use the allulose or the development of some of these not cane sugar sweeteners has been huge for. For cooking, for baking. When you can use an allulose blend, which we like the swerve brand of that.
If you use that, it's one to one with sugar. There's no reason that we can't enjoy that. Those types of casseroles and not just be sweating afterwards in a diabetic, like insulin shock.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: You know, and. But it's true. And we don't have to feel yucky when we get up, you know, from eating probably no rolls. I don't think we'll do any kind of bread rolls or anything like that.
But our plates will be full. Cranberry. I like cranberry sauce with my turkey. And again, you can cook your cranberries if you make your own.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: To buy cranberries.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Buy cranberries and make cranberry sauce. Again, use an alternative sweetener to sugar.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Like allulose.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Like allulose, yeah. And the pumpkin pie. Or I may. We may do some of those little mini cheesecakes.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: I love them. Those things are so good. You could do like your green bean casserole instead of doing those French fried onions. You can do cheese, you know, instead of cream of mushroom soup. You could do some cream and some mushrooms.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Like.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: So again, you're using ingredients and not packages that you got from the store.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Yeah, you're really making the food.
But it's delicious, though, especially with the.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Internet and with things like Chat GPT. You can open Chat GPT and say, I want a low carb Thanksgiving meal.
These are the foods I'm used to eating. Will you please plan this out for me? And Chat GPT will give you the whole thing with the recipes and the grocery list and everything you need. Yeah.
It's probably never been easier to ideate to come up with the ideas for how to do this than it is right now. Because you can use some type of AI to help and it will gladly make the whole thing for you.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: And if you have, we have a favorite recipe in our family. It's a broccoli rice and cheese casserole.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: And it's got the rice in it. Well, if you just use some rice cauliflower, you can still have all of it.
But I could take that recipe that we love.
Pump it into chat GPT and say, please make this low carb and give me. I'll give me the new recipe.
It'll do that for me.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: So I can. I'm still using my family recipe. I'm still making it to where the kids are going to like it, to where you're going to like it, to where everyone enjoys it, but it just brings it down a little bit.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Yep. You bet.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Because we all know we load our plates up.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: And we're going to do that.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: So.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: And when you get up from the table, no matter what, don't feel like the wagon has left you standing. Yeah. In. In the mud of the standard American diet. Just.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Next meal, go right back to eating your low carb.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: That's right. So as you go through the holidays, just remember a few tricks and mostly enjoy yourself and bring something that you're happy to eat.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Yeah. For sure. Yep.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Thank you guys for hanging out with us today here at the Dust From Red Podcast. And until next time, bye, y'.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: All. Bye.
